Chickens “coming home to roost” for next Victorian energy minister, whoever it might be

A leading energy analyst has delivered a grim warning for the next Victoria state government, warning that the November election may turn out to be a poisoned chalice for the next energy minister, whatever their political colours, as the problems of the last decade “come home to roost”.

The comments came from Oliver Nunn, of Endgame Analytics, as current Labor energy minister Jaclyn Symes and opposition energy spokesman David Davis spoke at the All Energy conference in Melbourne, with Symes warning of disaster in a change of government, and Davis seeking to dialling down his tone in an attempt to woo the industry.

The reality, according to Nunn, is overwhelmingly grim. 

“I was reminded of Alien versus Predator, where the tagline is: whoever wins, we lose,” Nunn said at the same plenary session at the All Energy conference on Wednesday.

“We’ve wasted a decade, and now whoever is the politician who is going to be the energy minister is basically going to be the minister who gets left without a chair when the music stops. 

“Over the next three years [this is] the period where all of the chickens come home to roost.”

Nunn’s view is that there is a 30 per chance of winter blackouts in the coming term of government, and he doesn’t believe the energy sector as a whole fully realises the seriousness of the problem. 

Victoria’s energy market is in a tight position, as EnergyAustralia has locked in 2028 as the final year for the 1.45 gigawatt (GW) Yallourn power station, yet financial headwinds and slow planning processes mean not enough new generation is being built in the state. 

Vicgrid has already identified a range of weaknesses in the state’s grid infrastructure that will be felt once Yallourn closes, be it power lines that are too small to handle extra power from New South Wales (NSW), or a lack of grid to bring power from the state’s wind and solar heartlands in the west.

The next government will be tasked with building this new infrastructure, but Davis has already promised a “short, sharp” review into the Western Renewables Link (WRL) and other Vicgrid projects and to cancel the VNI West interconnector to NSW entirely. 

Symes, meanwhile, warned that a Liberal-Nationals coalition government would “slam on the brakes” of Victoria’s energy transition, undermining investor confidence, delaying critical infrastructure and putting projects and jobs at risk.

Victoria now has 57 operating solar farms, 44 wind farms, 26 large-scale batteries, and more than 900,000 rooftop solar systems, Symes said, in listing the rollout of renewables that contribute about 45 per cent of the state’s power. The government had also announced 139 community batteries were in the works, exceeding a target of 100 promised four years ago.

Symes, who took over from Australia’s longest serving energy minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, in July, said she wanted to be the person to continue D’Ambrosio’s “nation leading legacy”.

However “staying the course matters,” Symes said, in making her pitch for a Labor re-election. “It requires a solid plan and collaboration across the entire energy system, and the determination to see it through. Energy infrastructure it lasts for decades.”

“Investors need clear policy, predictable approvals, and confidence that the infrastructure connecting projects will be delivered. But further progress is far from guaranteed,” she said, in a nod perhaps to election polls that point to a Coalition victory.

“The upcoming state election will be enormously consequential for Victoria’s energy future,” Symes said. “At a time when we need to accelerate, the Victorian Coalition is proposing to slam on the brakes.”

As Renew Economy noted on Monday, Labor has not cited energy and climate as among its priorities despite Victoria’s success in lowering wholesale and retail prices – notwithstanding Symes’s address to the mostly clean energy supportive crowd at All Energy 2026.

Similarly, while the Labor government has a list of policies supporting households and businesses to use more renewables, Symes sole new announcement to the conference related to the $7.5 million plan to “kickstart Victoria’s renewable gas industry”.

“Renewable gas is a new and exciting technology,” Symes told the conference. “It also makes use of what makes Victoria special: our world-class researchers, skilled workers, and a diverse agricultural sector.”

“Electrification will do much of the heavy lifting in moving away from fossil fuels, but unfortunately, it can’t do everything,” she said, adding, “Renewable fuels can play a role in aviation, shipping, food production, and transport, while strengthening our fuel sovereignty and reducing our exposure to volatile international markets.”

Symes also attacked the pledge by a Coalition government in the state “cancel VNI West and flirt with the same for Western Renewables Link,” calling them “concerning”.

“These are not optional extras,” she said. “They are critical infrastructure for the energy system that Victoria needs to build.”

However, Symes’s boss, Premier Ben Carroll, introduced uncertainty of his own last month, promising that a re-elected Labor government would put the Western Renewables Link up for a cost review.

The move surprised some within the government and Carroll’s accompanying media release notably cited only three local Labor MPs and not Symes nor planning minister Sonya Kilkenny.

Symes has managed to hold the line on Labor’s support for the electrification of homes and the ban on new gas connections.

“We’re focused on securing the limited supply that we do have,” she told the conference. “Gas-fired generation is now the most expensive in the market,” Symes said.

“Unfortunately, it seems a key component of our political opponents’ policy, because their policy is to increase reliance on gas-fired generation at the same time as abandoning our nation-leading gas substitution policies that assist households to electrify, and of course save people so much money.”

Pollster Simon Welch says the polls so far point to a Coalition majority in the lower house after the November 28 election. 

“The election is very much going to be a referendum on the economic and the social pains that have been inflicted upon the people of Victoria through COVID and post-COVID, cost of living crisis and those sorts of things,” says Welch, director at Redbridge Group.  

“The terrain on which energy policy will be judged by these [suburban and middle Australia] voters is absolutely cost.”

He says the average voter is aware of the need for more generation from a diversity of sources, and that’s the “real politics” the next energy minister will have to deal with. 

The Clean Energy Council’s William Churchill said political brinksmanship was creating uncertainty that was holding back the deployment of new generation needed to replace closing coal fired power station.

“We are now at the point between now and at the end of the decade that we really need to get cracking and get building, otherwise we are going to face really serious issues,” he said at the All Energy conference. 

Welch said the next energy minister may be able to rule alone in the lower house, but will have to deal with a “more traditional” upper house after changes to group voting tickets.

“I think a lot of, as we used to call it the Star Wars canteen aspect of [the upper house] goes, and we end up with a chunk of Labor, a chunk of Libs, a chunk of One Nation, a few Greens,” Welch says.

“What becomes interesting then is you may see very strange bedfellows delivering policy through parliament, like you may see Labor-Liberal voting blocks to get policy through… issues like energy.”

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